Is cheap gaming dead?

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: shaw
You're forgetting a few things also.

#1 Inflation
#2 Making those stronger GPUs with more/faster memory isn't going to make them cheaper
#3 10 years ago, a top of the line PC easilly broke $2K-$3K ($1,000 14inch CRTs, lol), now you could make something top of the line for $1-$1.5 I say.

I have an old Dell advertisement for home PCs at $2000.

I got one of the first Compaq P1-100MHz ever releaed on the market, with 16MB PC100 SD-RAM and 1GB HDD. It was $3,000 if I recall. Then the damn P1-133MHz came out a month later.. damned Intel.

Gaming is cheap as hell now, you're crazy.

Yup :thumbsup:

 

[imported_shaw]

Also, you're taking into an account a videocard softmod, that's not being very realistic with your figures from the beginning.

 

[imported_X]

Originally posted by: JBT
Ever heard of OCing a 3000 Venice to just about those speeds and a 6800GT can be had for $300 and under now too and they almost always reach Ultra or past speeds. Thats like under 500 bucks certianly not 1200!!

I don't consider an OC 3000 Venice and a 6800GT to be high end by today's standards. People seem to forget that you can similarly OC an FX55/57 or 7800 to get even higher results. People also tend to ignore the reality that OCing usually incurs its own set of costs, especially if you get into water or vapor cooling.

The sad reality is that it is more expensive to be bleeding edge today than in the past, and the upward trend seems to be continuing in that direction. I wouldn't be surprised to see future graphics cards moving into the $700-$800 range, with physics processing cards incurring an additional couple hundred bucks at least.

At some point, the consumer has to ask if gaming on a pc is really worth that kind of expense. I don't know how the majority will answer, but anecdotally there seem to be more and more people considering consoles. I don't think I'll ever go totally console, but I am definitely thinking about 360/PS3 to get me by for another year or two, until pc hardware can offer a similar price/performance ratio.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: shaw
Also, you're taking into an account a videocard softmod, that's not being very realistic with your figures from the beginning.

As opposed to a 6800 nu pipemod?

 

[imported_shaw]

Well, when PCs where really taking off the marke wasn't that big so everything was uber expensive, PCs back in the day IMO sucked.

As the market grew, PC gaming got cheaper and the market increased.

Now that the market is huge manufactures are making incredibly higher end products, which is why they're so expensive.

If I remember in the Geforce2 Ultra days, being able to play any game around or above 60fps you had a monster rig. Now a days, 60fps is laughable for a highend rig and people are beyond 100FPS.

EDIT:

No, I do not take any OC or softmodding into consideration. You could say:

<You> I remember when I could OC a P4 1.8GHz Northwood to 2.5GHz and the CPu was only $150. So cheap!

another person could just as easily say

<Them> I remember when I could OC a P4 2.8GHz Northwood to 3.5GHz and the CPU was only $350! So cheap!

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: shaw
Well, when PCs where really taking off the marke wasn't that big so everything was uber expensive, PCs back in the day IMO sucked.

As the market grew, PC gaming got cheaper and the market increased.

Now that the market is huge manufactures are making incredibly higher end products, which is why they're so expensive.

If I remember in the Geforce2 Ultra days, being able to play any game around or above 60fps you had a monster rig. Now a days, 60fps is laughable for a highend rig and people are beyond 100FPS.

This is very true. Back in the day, 1024x768 was considered to be a "high" resolution...these days, some people don't even want to think about gaming at that low of a resolution. With people buying lots of high-resolution LCD monitors lately (and lots of big CRT's already out there), the standard is much higher than it used to be. 1600x1200 (or 1680x1050 in my case 😉) is basically standard these days, at least for reasonably high-end video cards.

 

[Kogan]

Here's a current mid-range gaming system I priced about a week ago (many parts used/refurbished):

June 19
136 6600gt video (refurbished)
100 amd 3000+ 939 cpu (used)
$60 939 motherboard (refurbished)
$79 pc3200 2x512 corsair value ram

$60 psu
$25 case
$60 hdd
-----
$520

Nice system that will last for many years to come 🙂

 

[Munky]

You do not need a gf7800 for decent gaming. It's nice to have, but a 6800gt is still a good card, and what about the x800xl? Almost as good as a 6800gt, for like $250. Cpu's are getting more expensive, though, but look at it this way: you pay more for a cpu with a built in mem controller, and then you can save money by getting cheap ram and still get high bandwidth and low latency. The gf7800 is not a bargain by any means, but I'm sure other cards will come along soon that offer better bang for the buck.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Kogan
Here's a current mid-range gaming system I priced about a week ago (many parts used/refurbished):

June 19
136 6600gt video (refurbished)
100 amd 3000+ 939 cpu (used)
$60 939 motherboard (refurbished)
$79 pc3200 2x512 corsair value ram

$60 psu
$25 case
$60 hdd
-----
$520

Nice system that will last for many years to come 🙂

:thumbsup:

Even though many people around here are into really high end gaming (of course..this being a Video forum and all 😛), mainstream stuff is still relatively inexpensive and performs well for what it is.

Hell, that system you listed is still way faster than what most of my friends are still using....:Q

 

[imported_shaw]

I also remember back in the day when I used to play Unreal Tournament on software rendering because it was faster then hardware rending (on my crappy Cyrix II-333MHz e-Machine with 16MB of embedded memory). It was the first time I ever overclocked though jumpers on the motherboard (so annoying).

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: munky
You do not need a gf7800 for decent gaming. It's nice to have, but a 6800gt is still a good card, and what about the x800xl? Almost as good as a 6800gt, for like $250. Cpu's are getting more expensive, though, but look at it this way: you pay more for a cpu with a built in mem controller, and then you can save money by getting cheap ram and still get high bandwidth and low latency. The gf7800 is not a bargain by any means, but I'm sure other cards will come along soon that offer better bang for the buck.

the 6800gt is still an awesome card you mean? The 9800 is still "good", imo. That's basically the change in recent years. Now there's abysmal/poor/satisfactory/good/great/awesome/insane as opposed to just abysmal/poor/average/good/great 😀

I like to hang out with a beer in good/great room whereas Rollo and his ilk are smoking cubans and drinking brandy in the awesome/insane room :laugh:

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Malladine

Originally posted by: munky
You do not need a gf7800 for decent gaming. It's nice to have, but a 6800gt is still a good card, and what about the x800xl? Almost as good as a 6800gt, for like $250. Cpu's are getting more expensive, though, but look at it this way: you pay more for a cpu with a built in mem controller, and then you can save money by getting cheap ram and still get high bandwidth and low latency. The gf7800 is not a bargain by any means, but I'm sure other cards will come along soon that offer better bang for the buck.

the 6800gt is still an awesome card you mean? The 9800 is still "good", imo. That's basically the change in recent years. Now there's abysmal/poor/satisfactory/good/great/awesome/insane as opposed to just abysmal/poor/average/good/great 😀

I like to hang out in good/great room

I'm personally an "awesome" (but not "insane") man, myself. :laugh:

 

[Grimbor]

Even going back several years, the gf2 Ultra when it hit market was probably a little more then the 7800 is now on release when adjusted for inflation. Back then, your alternative choices were limited to a much inferior voodoo. It took a pretty long while before the gf2 TI value hit market that gave close to ultra performance for a lower cost.

Things are much cheaper now because toned down versions of top end cards are hitting market fast. The 9500 pro you mention was a toned down version of the 9700 pro, which cost a good $550. There was also competition on market on that generation from Nvidia.

We are only into day 2 of the initial release of the 7800 and there is no competition on market yet for the generation, so of course the card will be at a premium price point. In a few months, the R520 will be on market and you'll see toned down versions of both cards priced to stay within certain ranges. What will probably happen is the ATI card will be faster and Nvidia will release a 520 meg, 32 pipe version of the 7800 that will be their top end priced card, making the current 7800 a mid to low end card and priced in the $200 range, and probably pretty quickly.

Even for the total budget gamer, the choices today are far better then any time in the past. I got my A64 PCIe MB for under $70, a 10000 rpm raptor HD for $70, single A64 CPUs are cheap and I got a vanilla refurbed 6600 for $60. This $60 card OCs stable to 550/700 and plays any new game much better then any similarly priced vid card would a few years ago.

The only way to make a fair comparision to the 9500 pro is to wait about 6 more months.

 

[VIAN]

MSI K8N Neo4-F $88 @newegg.com

Not that bad. Since CPUs are being released at a slower pace, you would expect to pay more. So factor that in. That's not that bad. At least the RAM got cheaper.

600 for 7800 might be for a few reasons, wait till ATI comes out and then we'll see what happens to prices.

 

[nitromullet]

Even a 3000 venice is $150; not cheap at all compared to half price $80 athlon XP cpus.

I just pulled my order history from newegg, and I paid $143 for an OEM Athlon XP 2000+ on 6/29/2002.

A few other interesting purchases in my computing history. As you can see, some things have gone up in price, some have come down.

$152.00 VGA LEADTEK | GF4 TI4200 6/29/2002 - best bang for buck ever!
$95.00 HD 80GB | IBM 7200R 8/26/2002
$103.00 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200M0 200GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 6/22/2005
$149.99 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 3/11/2003
$369.99 FX Ultra/1200 XP GS Geforce FX5900 128MB DDR AGP 8/24/2003 (this is a vanilla FX 5900, not sure why Gainward called it an "Ultra" anything...)

 

[knyghtbyte]

one thing i would like to say when people say 9800 are still good in comparison to 6800, ur talking crap......ok, sure, a 9800XT can get framerates similar to a 6800GT....but it dont look as good!..it doesnt have the ability to do the eyecandy that the newer card does......so its performs well in regards to frames per second, but it looks like a bag of poo in comparison...i know as i own them......and on similar rigs.....being honest, i'd rather pay out for the card that looks nice with the newer games, if that means forking out £300 every 2 years im happy too......

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
one thing i would like to say when people say 9800 are still good in comparison to 6800, ur talking crap......ok, sure, a 9800XT can get framerates similar to a 6800GT....but it dont look as good!..it doesnt have the ability to do the eyecandy that the newer card does......so its performs well in regards to frames per second, but it looks like a bag of poo in comparison...i know as i own them......and on similar rigs.....being honest, i'd rather pay out for the card that looks nice with the newer games, if that means forking out £300 every 2 years im happy too......

I guess it's a matter of what res/settings you like to run at. I rarely ever go beyond 1024 in any game. I suppose if you have to have the highest settings in any game you get then it makes sense for you to buy the card that lets you do that.

I still say the 9800 is a good card. Thing is i'm not comparing with other cards exactly, more that I'm comparing it with the games it can run. IMO a card only drops below good if it is unable to run a game acceptably at 1024 with a few settings turned up. I can see how those who need to run their games at higher settings than that would find whatever card to be less than good sooner than I would. You say tomato and I say tomahto 😛

 

[aka1nas]

No offense Zendari, but how long have you been working with computers? I think you are focusing too much on the last 4 years and ignoring the big picture. PC hardware has been much more expensive and finally got cheap with the competition between AMD and Intel and overall soft demand for new PCs driving down prices. I think that demand is finally coming back up, so common components like RAM are becoming more expensive.

 

[dfloyd]

First PC I ever purchased, at least for a new one, my first was a used 286 w/ the uber Mono Monitor and HERCULES graphics 😛, is below:

486 DX2/80
8 MB Ram
420 GB Hard Drive
14" Monitor
S3 Trio 64 V+ 1Mb Expandable to 2Mb Memory Hooo YEAH 😛
Plain Keyboard
Plain Mouse
Win 3.1 Dos 6.2

My current PC:

Athlon 64 3200+
1 GB 400 Mhz Ram
X800XL
160 GB Hard Drive
Dell 2005 FPW
Logitech Natural Elite Wireless Keyboard
Logitech MX 1000 True Laser Mouse
Win Xp Pro

Guess which cost less.....

So no I would not come close to say gaming is becoming more expensive. I would say you get unprecidented power for what you pay for now. At least comparativly speaking. You dont have to buy that Nvidia card to have a great video card. Depending on what res your playing you could just but a 6800NU or a 6600 GT and do fine in almost every game out right now. So claiming you have to pay $600 to enjoy games is not correct at all friend. But if you want the newest and hottest thing out you will ALWAYS have to pay a premium.

Edit: I do agree though that the price of video cards, gpu /me snickers, are kind of silly. It makes no sense to pay two to three times the cost of other video cards that are close to two thirds or so the performance of the new one out. Unless of course you cant play a game without them, then its a different story.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
one thing i would like to say when people say 9800 are still good in comparison to 6800, ur talking crap......ok, sure, a 9800XT can get framerates similar to a 6800GT....but it dont look as good!..it doesnt have the ability to do the eyecandy that the newer card does......so its performs well in regards to frames per second, but it looks like a bag of poo in comparison...i know as i own them......and on similar rigs.....being honest, i'd rather pay out for the card that looks nice with the newer games, if that means forking out £300 every 2 years im happy too......

You mean my 9800(xt) looks like crap because one stupid game forces me to run sm1.1 if I don't have sm3 support? Pffffft.... I wasnt gonna buy the game anyway. I can run HL2 and Farcry at medium-high settings at 10x7 with 4xAA, and it sure don't look like crap to me. Even BF2 demo runs smooth at those settings. You can brag about playing at 16x12, but with 128mb mem, a 6800 vanilla is not gonna be any good there either. So, if you have a big screen LCD, then you pretty much have to spend $300+ every 2 years to have decent gaming.

Also, I've coded some of my own 3d games, and there are many ways to accomplish a certain effect. For example, on the newer cards that have a hw accelerated accumulation buffer (9500 and higher) you can do soft shadows without even using any shaders. Just because some developer chose to implement it using sm3 only, doesnt mean some other developer cant do in a different way, and guess whose game I'm gonna buy?

The only feature that impressed me on the gf7800 was the transparent AA, and by your definition, it makes the 6800gt look like crap. Looks like you'd have to spend $600 every 2 years to have nice gaming. But wait, it still cant do HDR and AA at the same time -- it must be crap! You'll have to spent another $600 next year when they finally let you have both features working.

 

[bamacre]

The cheapest way to build a budget gaming rig is to buy a reburb'd Dell and upgrade it. Can't build it for less 🙂

 

[xtknight]

Here's a rig for $505 that will keep you gaming for years to come, at LEAST at 1024x768 medium settings, a lot higher in games today. I even stuck in a 160 GB hard drive.
I got these prices from newegg, so you may find cheaper elsewhere. You are mainly talking about gaming components, so I don't include standard PC components in here.

eVGA 128-A8-N343-AX Geforce 6800 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail - $189.00

pqi TURBO 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model PQI3200-1024DAH - Retail - $69.00

HITACHI Deskstar 7K250 HDS722516VLAT80 160GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $78.00

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Newcastle Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 754 Processor Model ADA2800BOX - Retail - $121.00

CHAINTECH SK8T800 Socket 754 VIA K8T800 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $48.00

OK, it doesn't include the power supply, monitor, OS, keyboard, mouse, but those you already have, right?

Even then, no offense but $505 is diddly squat compared to what you'd pay for a car or house. And you probably use your PC at least once a day, maybe three times a week or more for gaming. I'd gladly pay $2000 for something that will keep me entertained 2+ years, 365 days a year and 2-3 hours a day. OK not quite that much but...you get my point. Besides, people tend to forget the purpose of PCs. All of these components can go towards performance of general use, including the video card's MPEG-2 video acceleration. Tell me something else you can get that much enjoyment out of for such little money. Buying a new movie every day of the year would end up costing $7300. Gaming doesn't seem so expensive, does it? Even including your high-speed Internet bill.

 

[Beiruty]

This is a $599 PC that needs only a decent video card: http://www.betanews.com/article/Gateway_Debuts_599_Media_Center_PC/1119536435